Transform Your Flight Sim Experience
with In-Depth Tracking & Analysis
Track every flight, analyse your performance,
and master your flying skills with My FS Flights
Get 10 flights free every month!
Tracked and analysed flights over miles
Beccles Airfield lies in the Suffolk countryside southeast of the town of Beccles, a small private aerodrome built as a wartime bomber station and now home to flight training, parachuting and microlight operations. Its single runway, part original wartime concrete and part grass, gives it a distinctive character among East Anglian airfields, and its history as RAF Beccles and a North Sea helicopter base adds real interest for the visiting VFR pilot.
Beccles Airfield (ICAO: EGSM) is a small private aerodrome near Beccles in Suffolk, operated by Rain Air (trading as Hornbill Aeroservices). It sits on part of a much larger Second World War Class A bomber airfield, and today supports private flying, flight training, parachuting and microlight activity. For the sim pilot it offers a short, characterful strip with genuine wartime heritage still visible in surviving hangars and buildings, set among industrial units that now occupy much of the old airfield site.
Beccles Airfield is located approximately 2 nautical miles southeast of the town of Beccles in Suffolk, England. It lies within the East Anglian countryside near the coast, in an area historically dense with wartime airfields.
Beccles has a single physical runway, 09/27. Runway 09 is 2128 feet long and runway 27 is 1843 feet long, both hard-surfaced and lit. There is no ILS at the field.
The aerodrome is served by an Air/Ground radio facility, callsign Beccles A/G, on frequency 120.375 MHz.
Beccles Airfield was built in 1943-44 for the United States Army Air Force as Station 132, using the Class A three-runway layout typical of East Anglian bomber airfields, and was the most easterly wartime airfield in England. It was known locally as Ellough Airfield. The USAAF found it surplus to requirements, and it passed to RAF Coastal Command from August 1944, principally hosting No. 280 Squadron flying Vickers Warwick aircraft on Air Sea Rescue duties, recovering damaged bombers returning from raids over Europe; other RAF and Fleet Air Arm squadrons flying Fairey Barracuda, Supermarine Walrus, Fairey Swordfish, Supermarine Sea Otter and Fairey Albacore types also operated from the base, with the Fleet Air Arm's presence known as HMS Hornbill II. One notable wartime incident saw pilot Bob Macwhite skilfully ground-loop a badly damaged B-17, Thomas Paine, to avoid children playing near the runway. The airfield is perhaps best remembered for the brief 1943 visit of No. 618 Squadron, sister squadron to the Dambusters' 617 Squadron, who used Beccles to practise dropping the smaller 'Highball' bouncing bomb from Mosquito aircraft, with the runway marked out to replicate an aircraft carrier deck for deck-landing practice; both bomb designer Barnes Wallis and test pilot Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown visited during this period, reportedly without either realising what the other was working on. After the war the site fell dormant until 1965, when BEA Helicopters (later British International Helicopters) established a base at the eastern end supporting North Sea oil and gas operations with Sikorsky S-61 helicopters, continuing for around 25 years before helicopter operations transferred to Norwich in the 1990s. A fixed-wing flying school, RainAir, was established in 1997, followed by UK Parachuting in 2008, Virage Helicopter Academy in 2010 and a microlight school in 2013.
Beccles Airfield today is run by Hornbill Aeroservices Ltd, who took over operation in 2019 and have carried out significant refurbishment, including three new hangars, a resurfaced runway and an on-site cafe. The field remains home to flight training, UK Parachuting's free-fall parachute operations, Virage Helicopter Academy, and Mid Anglia Microlights, which conducts both fixed-wing and weightshift microlight training. It also hosts No. 28 (Suffolk) Civil Air Patrol Unit, a volunteer organisation supporting the emergency services, and since 2016 Skylark Radio Control Flyers have operated model aircraft from the concrete runway in coordination with powered flying. The aerodrome holds a CAA Ordinary Licence permitting public transport flights and flying instruction under the licensee, but it is not licensed for night use. Two original wartime T2 hangars survive, along with other service buildings, and prior permission is required for visiting aircraft.
